Brexit threatens Cornish pasty's racial purity Any reader who's still undecided as to how to vote in the forthcoming, and increasingly tedious, EU referendum, should consider a Brexit future without the culinary protection afforded us by membership of the happy European family of nations. Last week, the Cornish Pasty Association came out in favour of Britain remaining in …
Several years ago some British cider makers sold what they called 'Champagne Cider'. The EU stopped them selling that - apparently confusing with something made with grapes in North East France.
If we leave the EU will they be able to market it again ? (In the UK/world, but not the EU).
Yes: the French would complain about their sour grapes - but would we care ?
If I recall it was someone making elderflower champagne and they had to change the name to something else because champagne was a protected designation of origin. British food & drink producers benefit from the same rules e.g. Melton Mowbray pies are protected. At one point Newcastle Brown Ale was protected and then the manufacturer moved their factory out of Newcastle they had to have their protection cancelled because they were in violation of their own protection (!).
Another Brexit lie. The exclusive right to the name Champagne for a sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region of France is protected under the International Regulation of Marks, aka the Madrid System under a treaty of 1891 and specifically reaffirmed in the Treaty of Versailles. The use of the name for any alcoholic drink other than the French regional variety is also banned in those well known EU countries the USA, Chile, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa, amongst others.
"Australia *is* in the EU, I saw it on Eurovision."
An ex-colleague, recently having breakfast at a hotel, felt that he had to inform the little lad at the next table that despite what his parents were assuring him it was extremely unlikely that they would be seeing kangaroos in the wild any time soon.
According to the kid's parents it is entirely my ex-colleague's fault that Austria is not seething with a wide range of marsupials.
It really pays to turn off auto-complete when booking that overseas holiday.
The exclusive right to the name Champagne for a sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region of France is protected under the International Regulation of Marks, aka the Madrid System under a treaty of 1891 and specifically reaffirmed in the Treaty of Versailles.
Does the exclusive right to the Champagne name only extend to sparkling wines? If so that'd explain why the wine producers haven't sued the Champagne Cognac producers. It'd make for an interesting legal battle since AFAIK the Champagne regions in south-west France have been making brandy longer than the Champagne region in north-west France has been making sparkling wine.
There's a specific exception for Champagne Cognac in the original registration mark for Champagne, because it was already in existence, and derives its name from the region in which it is produced; although that is not the same region as the sparkling wine.
Usage suggests that is does indeed only apply to sparkling wine however as, contrary to the original poster's assertion, Bulmers won the case brought against them by Bollinger, as they were using the méthode champenoise to produce Pomagne. However the year after they won the case they switched to bulk industrial fermentation, and therefore could no longer justify the "champagne" tag.
Cheers! :)
actually......there are records of the "méthode champenoise" being used in Somerset BEFORE it was recorded in France. Admittedly we were making cider, not wine, but the method was identical. To quote from http://www.ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Burrow_Hill_Cider
"This so called ‘Champagne Method’ was pioneered in Hereford in 1632 by Lord Scudamore before the Civil War and had reached Montacute House in Somerset by 1664, long before the French even claim to have invented the method…"
So the bloody frogs were pinching our strategic technology yet again!
Interestingly, the hill west of Montacute is terraced with what were - according to village tradition - vineyards, though it was never clear if the supposed wine makers were the Romans, or the Clunaic (i.e. French) monks. Perhaps both? Wine is still grown further north in Somerset
Dunno why being in the EU or not would make much difference.
French winemakers used the area of origin laws to stop australian and kiwi winemakers labelling their stuff as champagne - then promptly put those same winemakers to work making wine under contract to be sold as "champagne"
It's not so much about area of origin as manufacturer name protection. Making it under license is apparently ok.
The heat is up regarding the referendum, apparently also on ElReg articles. I wrote a "stay" comment on "itsmymoney" that was rejected, and I wonder why. And no, I did not mention nor Champagne nor Cognac or Scotch Whisky.
Was the reason that I wrote I rather listen to a guy like Stephen Hawking than to guys like Farage and Boris because Hawking is known to use his brains and is not running for office.
Or was it because - "It's sad to see how Brits have fallen for the same rhetoric as the Trumpers in the USA. "Make America great again - Everybody is cheating on us - Those fucking foreigners - I will make great deals again".
Or perhaps It was because I suggested it's better to look forward than to one's arse, while I fully admitted that I tend to look at the "behind" when it comes to women.
Oh well, you know I love you too, but I have to tell a story some old seamen told me then long ago.
I went to sea as a merchant sailor when I was sixteen, see the world and all of that. (IT came much later in 1967).
What those old men told me was that some years after the war they sailed into some harbour in England much surprised to find it looked just as before. Longshoremen than told them - yes indeed, it was all destroyed during the Blitz but they built it up just as it was. Perhaps just "one of those stories" but still, somebody must have invented it, out of the blue?.
While the referendum is up to you, it's also a divorce, and I feel no reason not to express my opinion, with all due respect.
"from a forced marriage"
Absolutely untrue.
We voted.
But the current revote is less about the value of the EU and much more about the feeling that everyone in Europe is a foreigner except us, Whipped up by the usual populist politicians and witch hunting newspapers who've been spreading FUD for years..
No, it's absolutely true.
We voted for the EEC, not the EU - which is a political union.
Your assumptions about how British people should "feel" towards Europe are incidental to the issue of political union. We can remain on good terms with our European neighbours and have close cooperation and trading relationships without surrendering our country to the institution that is the EU.
The public are being conned into thinking they must adopt one of two opinions: hating Europeans or hating ourselves so much that we subordinate ourselves to a superstate. We can stay independent and remain close to Europe just as Norway and Switzerland do.
> We voted for the EEC, not the EU - which is a political union
... and introduced via the back door, not openly.
The symbols of statehood in our passports, driving licences etc have been replaced with the EU flag. There is even a .eu top-level domain. It thinks of itself as a country.
Was the idea that after a couple of generations, people would wake up thinking of themselves as citizens of the EU too?
Are these things really required of a common trading area?
It's a fair point, but this is real life. can we really believe we can remain on good terms with our European neighbours given that the vote leave campaign has more of less descended to nothing but jingoism and Johnny Foreigner baiting?
Of course the standard response to that is "Well, we don't accept that" to any non supportive view, rather than explaining why the view is wrong.
If we put this into microcosm though, if I repeatedly tell my next door neighbour that he's cunning, evil, wants to steal my lawn mower, that he wants me to buy his children's school shoes and that I absolutely never want to help him if his house ever catches fire, I'd expect him not to want to have a lot to do with me. Unfortunately the more fervent Brexiteers appear more interested in winning the battle and by doing so losing the war (poor analogy in this case! lol, but i hope you get my point).
I agree we /could/ operate in harmony (as a remainer, I believe less prosperously), but crucially not the way things are going.
Sadly messy divorces, tend to stay messy for years, so the reasons to divorce must be overwhelming to offset the cut up clothes, legal interventions and point scoring.
Divorce or not, Brexit or not.
Suppose you are in the process of divorcing. Some of your friends will perhaps point out that you have children, your wife is actually a very nice person, you work for a great company. All about the reality, so think again, don't destroy what you have, rather build on it. Non of those friends will claim that divorcing will suddenly open up a new heaven for you.
Then compare that to the friends who support your divorce. They can claim/suggest you will meet the women of your life, young beautiful, and if not rich her mother will be and her grandfather will appoint you CEO. Your teeth will grow back like your hair, and you will have a hell of a yacht.
This is what is going on in this Brexit debate. There is no limit to the lies and no limit to the fantasy,
Suddenly Airbus will fuck off and the Comet will fill the sky, suddenly the Commonwealth will bail the country out, suddenly Australia will order British submarines, suddenly there will be sunshine, suddenly Britain will rule the seas again, suddenly Britain will be top notch in nuclear technology. Tata will beg to return to Britain building cars and making British Steel number one in the world.
This is how the game is played.
It's like there is something new in the hair. On both sides of the pond.
Rather build on the reality.
I completely agree. We should build on what we have. We should shape the EU from within. Here's a thing though. We tried that. Cameron came to the EU with a begging bowl and got told in no uncertain terms to go home. He barely got scraps. Nothing at all meaningful. You see unless an individual nation states goals are exactly in line with the political integration master plan, the EU is not interested.
Which is why I will be voting to leave. Personally I sincerely hope that this leads to some meaningful negotiations followed by a second referendum.
But if it doesn't then I am prepared to take a hit on the economy and prosperity and all the other apocalyptic goings on that the remainers foresee just so that I can retain the right to elect my leaders, and to send them packing when they fail.
If we get a second vote and it includes some basic safeguards then I'm in. Otherwise, I want to leave.
Hey look - nothing at all racist about that argument.
Here's the rub;
"...... the right to elect my leaders, and to send them packing when they fail."
Corbyn? Soon, maybe, for the Tories, Gove or "Boris"?
I'm a usually a Labour supporter. But I didn't want Corbyn to be their leader. I loath the man and his Old Left cronies. I can't vote for that crew.
As to the Tories, Old Etonian Posh Boys and right of the right wing "Devil Take the Hindmost" free marketeers.
(There did once use to be another alternative- Liberal-Democrats or something but they imploded years ago) So what options do I have?
I'll take my chances with Europe given that choice?
@ Terry 6
"(There did once use to be another alternative- Liberal-Democrats or something but they imploded years ago) So what options do I have?
I'll take my chances with Europe given that choice?"
Thats an amazing impression of defeatism. You dont like the choices available to you right now so you may as well give up the right to choose and have potentially the equivalence of these people or worse imposed upon you. But not only are you happy not to have a choice but you want everyone else to suffer an imposed leader we dont want (we dont get to choose the EU leaders) so we can all be just as miserable?
Labour are having an interesting time of extreme lefties joining the party (they may see it as a good thing you and I may not) but that is right now. Corbyn could be ousted or may leave, he doesnt really have popularity· The last election showed a huge breakthrough for UKIP who were barely visible before and suddenly more popular than the greens and I think even the libs if I remember right. If we dont like our electoral system we can vote for people willing to change it and if it is popular we will. But if we surrender our freedom because its too difficult, what right do we have to freedom or choice if all we want to do is give it up?
"No-one under 45 voted lad."
The EC Referendum was on 5 June 1975.
The minimum age of anyone eligible to vote was 18.
Therefore only those born on or before 5 June 1957 were allowed to vote.
I make it "No one under 59 voted."
True, no one under 58/9 ish voted (I missed by a few months). But as a population we did vote.
And btw the biggest Brexit supporting group is also in that age range, apparently.
We are not really voting on the benefits or otherwise of the EU.
We're voting on a combination of "Little England"/avoiding regulations that some businesses and the press demonise and call "red tape" because they are there to protect ordinary folk/ generally not liking anyone too foreign/ Nostalgia for "The Good Old Days".
The emotional appeal of Brexit is largely trying to retreat to a simpler world that never really existed even then. The world where the sun always shone- even on bank holidays, we won football matches and petrol came in gallons not litres.
"We're voting on a combination of "Little England"/avoiding regulations that some businesses and the press demonise and call "red tape" because they are there to protect ordinary folk/ generally not liking anyone too foreign/ Nostalgia for "The Good Old Days"."
That might be your reason to vote and if it is I can see why you want to remain. The arguments I have heard are generally about not willingly allowing this country to be dragged down by a club that is perpetually in crisis- economy, employment, immigration, trade, political, etc. The arguments I hear are about protecting us from the contagion of various crisis often brought on by the EU and Eurozone itself.
As for emotional appeal it is the remain campaign talking about WW3, economic incompetence (another recession), incompetent global governance (unable to handle world wide trade or add up) and general fire and brimstone while putting off unfavourable EU impositions until the vote is over. The remain campaign seem to fear the world (talking of the campaign not necessarily the supporters), seem to fear running a country and seem to fear the democratic vote. If they cant handle it maybe we need to vote in a new gov.
The real sophistoes used to drink Babycham, "the original champagne perry" not its poor cousin "cider", but that's apples and pears for you.
There must be other old-fart commentards who remember it. Well unless they are down the Darby and Joan Club wearing a name tag so that they and others know who they are.
We still don't have an old-fart icon, why not?
many years ago, I was enjoying a series of pints in a pub in Ludlow, only to be entertained by the antics of an over-the-top American tourist couple. Typical yank OAP tourists - pastel coloured golf sweater, pastel socks, white baggy tapered trousers, very loud complaining voices. Nothing was good enough: the meal service was too slow, they couldn't understand the language (do you guys speak English here in Ludlow??), they tried to claim every meal the waitress brought from the kitchen because they didn't know what they'd ordered. Eventually they got the wrong meal and couldn't understand what cumberland sausage was......it seems they'd actually ordered steaks. By this time my brother and I were having fits of the giggles, but what finally made us both dissolve into hysterical laughter was this, delivered at loud volume for the whole pub to hear:
"Hey this here Baby champagne isn't anywhere as good as the real champagne we make back home in California. "
As to what happened to Babycham.......Brother's Cider is run by the Showering family and I believe uses very much the same processing techniques. Its a mainly pear-based cider with added flavouring and is very much the descendant of Babycham, even if made by a different company. Its the same family behind it.
the problem with Babycham was the number of women who used it as a mixer and drank "brandy and babycham". It could get bloody expensive. I had a girlfriend once who would knock back two or three Brandy & Babychams for every pint I drank. After a couple of expensive dates she got told to piss off back to her husband, as he had more money than me.
Of course, were it not for the EU they'd be allowed to prominently stamp "Made in Cornwall" on the packaging of real Cornish pasties. Before anyone says anything here, stamping such on something that came from elsewhere would fall foul of a variety of legislation that's been around since forever.
The EU does not allow origin discrimination of that nature on goods, hence the need for the "protected origin" scheme and the roomfuls of bureaucrats to administer it.
Or in other words, this is a typical EU bureaucratic solution to a problem entirely caused by, er, EU bureaucracy.
Yes, this sort of regulation is what holds us back from producing the nation's entire requirements for meat products (Cornish Pasties, Scotch Pies, Melton Mowbray Pork Pies) in one single hyper-efficient completely automated combination slaughterhouse and pastry smelter somewhere near Slough thereby delivering much needed skilled programming jobs to the South East region and shorter transit times for busy directors between their portfolios of fully renumerated pay postitions in the City.
"Yes, this sort of regulation is what holds us back from producing the nation's entire requirements for meat products"
It's more to stop producers, stores or restaurants flogging stuff as Stilton cheese, or Parma ham when actually it came from somewhere in Bulgaria and bears no relation to the thing its trying to pass itself off as.
It doesn't stop Bulgarian cheese or ham being sold but its sold on its merits rather than riding the coattails of someone elses. And if in time it gains a reputation for quality it can register for protection too.
"It's more to stop producers, stores or restaurants flogging stuff as Stilton cheese, or Parma ham when actually it came from somewhere in Bulgaria and bears no relation to the thing its trying to pass itself off as."
The trouble is it doesn't actually provide any guarantee of quality whatsoever. So long as they set it up in Cornwall, Bulgarians are perfectly free to set up a low-quality pastry forge, staffed entirely by Bulgarians who have never seen a real pasty and call the output genuine Cornish pasties.
It's got nothing to do with helping consumers and everything to do with the EU's (and all governments' to be fair) favourite sport of protecting vocal, special-interest groups especially in agriculture.
Hmmm, a link through to a EU website, definitely a trustworthy source! And reading the target, the headlines were based on an EU consultation paper, i.e. it was something they were considering doing, though I'm sure the tabloids will have not made that entirely clear...
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